Quantum Optics & Information Group

Description

Quantum Simulators and Quantum Technologies: Classical computers require enormous computing power and memory to simulate even the most modest quantum systems. That makes it difficult to model, for example, why certain materials are insulators and others are conductors or even superconductors. R. Feynman had grasped this since the 1980s and suggested to use instead another more controllable and perhaps artificial quantum system as a “quantum computer” or specifically in this case a “quantum simulator”. Working examples of quantum simulator technologies today include extremely cold atoms trapped with lasers and magnetic fields and ions in electromagnetic traps. Photons and polaritons in light-matter systems have also recently emerged as a promising avenue and we are happy to be one of the leading groups in this area. With photons, exotic phenomena thought to exist only in strongly interacting electronic systems, such as Mott transitions, Fractional Hall effect, spin-charge separation, interacting relativistic theories and topological physics can be reproduced and understood in more detail. In addition to the “many-body stuff”, he is also interested in the “few body” quantum effects found in nano-structures and cold ions systems interfaced with light. These hybrid systems are extremely interesting for the study of quantum effects like quantum interference and entanglement and for their potential use in building quantum memories and quantum processors. My work is mainly theoretical but we keep close contact with various experimental groups.

4. Dimitris G. Angelakis, Alastair Kay, “Weaving light-matter qubits into a one way quantum computer”, New J. Phys. Vol. 10, 023012 (2008). selected by Sciencewatch.com as one of the top 20 papers with most citations in the years 2008 and 2009 in the field of quantum computing.